Cat And Mouse
by Atri
Summary: AU. DM/HG. Hermione has been in exile for the past two years and she comes back to mourn the death of Ron Weasley. The last person she wants or expects to see is Draco Malfoy. One-Shot


Author's Note: DM/HG. Obviously AU. One-shot. I don't own Harry Potter.

ooo

At one point in time Number 12, Grimmauld Place had been a safe haven. But that was before the Order had been broken. Before Zacharias Smith had been captured, tortured, and given away its' location. Zacharias Smith had been an annoying and self-serving prat, but even he didn't deserve what they did to him. Only bits of him were ever found.

The irony made Hermione Granger want to laugh as she entered the burned out shell of a house.

She clutched the letter Harry had sent her with her instructions. She had to hand it to him; it was very clever to hide a graveyard where the Order of the Phoenix had once been housed.

She muttered the Disillusionment Charm Harry had told her to perform and all at once the ruins of the house dissolved away to reveal a small graveyard surrounded by a wrought iron gate. In an almost dreamlike state, she opened the gate and stepped inside.

It was small, with only six headstones. Usually when the Death Eaters killed they didn't leave a body. She read them from left to right. Terry Boot. Remus Lupin. Minerva McGonagall. Hannah Abbott. Fred Weasley. Then the one she came to see.

Ron Weasley.

At the sight of his gravestone Hermione fell to her knees in shock. When Harry wrote to her in her self-imposed exile in France to tell her the news, she'd cried for days before she was able to make the journey back to England. Seeing the grave was like a physical blow. She fumbled around in her coat pocket and pulled out a small diamond ring. Although she'd ceased wearing it months ago she'd never been able to throw it away. Wiping a tear from her eye, she placed it at the base of his grave.

"How pathetically sweet." A voice behind her sneered.

Hermione was instantly on her feet, wand out. Draco Malfoy stood at the entrance to the graveyard.

It infuriated her to see how refined and well groomed he looked. Looking at him, you couldn't tell there was a war raging and people were dying by the dozens every day.

Draco looked like he had never suffered a day in his life. He was wearing expensive black robes. He'd let his hair grow long and it currently almost came down to his shoulders. And he looked…well fed wasn't the term. Content. Satisfied. She wanted to scratch his eyes out in pure hatred. "You are the last person I want to see right now." She growled.

He smirked at her and rolled up the sleeves of his robe. "I'd be careful, if I were you. All I have to do is press this Mark and you'll be surrounded by Death Eaters before you can say 'Quidditch'."

She froze. "Why are you here?"

"What?" He pretended to look confused. "Is this not the time for a loving reunion? I haven't seen you in two years and I thought we'd make up for lost time."

"Can't you even let me mourn my husband in peace?" She asked bitterly, letting his comment slide. "God knows I didn't treat him well in life, at least let me try to in death."

"It was supposed to be you and me." He whispered. "But you couldn't do it, could you? Couldn't bring yourself to bring our relationship public. So you went on and married Weasley because that's what everyone expected you to do and you kept me on the side."

"Stop it."

"You started sleeping with me our last year at Hogwarts. Marriage changed nothing. You did everything you could to make sure nobody ever found out. The best friend of the Boy Who Just Won't Die just can't be involved with a Malfoy, can she? There can't be any divided loyalties…"

"My loyalty is here." She said through clenched teeth, gesturing at the row of graves. "With all the people you killed."

He cocked his head. "Now, that isn't exactly fair. I never laid a hand on McGonagall or Abbott. As for the little Weasel, well nobody knows for sure which spell did him in; he got hit with so many. He seemed to think he could take on half the Death Eaters by himself."

"You cowards."

She didn't scream it at him. She was quiet, biting, which to Draco was infinitely worse than her temper. He took a step toward her and reached for her. "Come with me. You don't have anyone else to turn to. You're probably only behind Potter on Voldemort's hit list."

Two years ago, Draco Malfoy telling her that would probably have frightened her. But she'd stopped feeling the moment her marriage to Ron ended. It had been her fault. She'd disappointed everyone. Harry and Ginny turned on her. Even Neville had changed. So she'd done the only realistic thing she could do: She left. And she'd stopped caring. Never staying in more than one place, living off of what she could find or steal, ignoring the horror stories coming out of Britain as Voldemort amassed more and more power. Now that there was no chance of forgiveness, Hermione didn't care whether she lived or died. "I'm not going with you."

Draco was immediately angry. "Why the hell not? You're dead if you don't, and you know it."

"What does it matter?" She snapped back. "There's nothing left. You and I…we could never be. Do you really think I could sit idly by while you murder the few friends I have left? I already…I already practically killed Ron myself."

"How did he find out?" He asked her.

"He knew." She said through clenched teeth. "I didn't even have to tell him, he just knew. One day I was in the parlor and he just came up and asked me. And I…I couldn't lie to him."

"And then what happened?" Draco asked.

Hermione glanced at the gravestone. "He told me to get out. He…he told me to never come back. I didn't even argue. I just walked out."

"Jesus, what happened to you three? Potter goes into hiding, Weasley dies in some crazy kamikaze mission and you disappear for two years because your marriage fell apart!"

"Harry turned on me when I cheated on Ron." Hermione finally lowered her wand. "The only time he contacted me was when he told me Ron died."

The war had been going on for seven years now and the death toll was mounting. Everyone coped with the horror in different ways. Harry still led the resistance, but he'd gone into hiding in the two years since Hermione left. Ginny, after discovering she was infertile, lived every day as though she expected to die. She always took the most dangerous missions and so far she'd been lucky. Harry had also written in the letter that they were estranged.

Hermione had had her own way of dealing with the war. She'd been sleeping with the enemy.

Draco absently kicked at the iron fence surrounding the graveyard. "Look, Hermione. I'm fucked up…I think we both know that. And I know that you hate me and you're so damn stubborn that I know you'll never get over what happened. So I'm not even going to try to win you over. You can deny it all you want but I know you care about me and it wasn't just about the sex. So I'm going to prove to you once and for all that I'm not a complete monster."

He rolled his sleeve down, and for the first time, Hermione noticed he was shaking. "What are you talking about?"

He sighed. "Harry told me you'd be here. I've been dealing with him for the past six months. We're going to try to kill Voldemort."

Well. Whatever she'd expected him to say that definitely wasn't it. She gaped at him, but no sound came out of her mouth. "How?" She finally managed to gasp. "Why?"

"Harry might be a worthless prat, but he did forgive you for what you did to Ron." Draco told her. "And even though you won't admit it, he knows your feelings for me were real. So I went to him and asked him to give me a chance to redeem myself. And he agreed. It's going to happen tonight. I'm going to confront Voldemort myself. He has no idea, so I should have the element of surprise on my side. If I fail…I hope that you'll still be able to think of me without cringing."

Anger instantly flooded Hermione's body. "Are you stupid?" She raged. "Why are you going to go and kill yourself? I don't care about you, and I never did! Just go back to your Death Eaters, ok?"

For the first time, Draco Malfoy looked vulnerable. "I told you, I'm not going to beg for you. And I know you better than anyone. You're too hard. You'll never get over the fact that you ruined your best friends life because you cared too much about what everyone thought of you. If I can't have you in this world, then it's not worth living in. And maybe if I do this, maybe I'll be forgiven for a little bit of the wrong I've done."

"Fine. Do it then." She said bitingly. "It's not going to change anything. It'll never make up for Ron's death."

Draco scowled at her, and pulled a blood red rose out of his pocket. He threw it at her feet. "I brought this for you. When Harry Apparates here, then you'll know it's over."

He flicked his wand faster than she could follow, and with a loud crack he was gone.

Hermione was left in the graveyard. Alone. The way she'd wanted it.  
In France, she'd tried to convince herself that she slept with Malfoy for four years because it was her way to handle the war. It was something to do, an escape if you will. At school it'd been difficult to keep their relationship a secret because they were surrounded by people in close quarters. Once they graduated, it became much easier. It ceased to be the romantic fairy-tale Hermione initially envisioned, and more brutal and frantic. They began to do it whenever they saw each other. Most often it was after a battle. They could be fighting to kill one minute, the panting in the dirt the next. The worst had been on the side of a Muggle school right after Flitwick and McGonagall were killed. She hadn't even said anything to him. They'd just walked up to each other. And when she went home to Ron and he asked why was so flushed, she'd lied and said she'd been fighting to save McGonagall's life.

She tried so hard to convince herself it was all about the sex. But she knew it wasn't.

Whatever she'd thought about Malfoy growing up, all those thoughts went out the door when the war began. It wasn't a relationship, but it was a dependence on each other. It was knowledge that no matter what happened, they would always be there for each other. And he did have his moments. On the night Fred Weasely died, he'd stayed with her and held her all night in the hollowed out shell of the house at Otter St. Catchpole. He saw that she got back to her house in Surrey the next morning and he even found half of Fred's wand and left it with her. He often left her red roses when he left her.

When Ron found out, Hermione had wanted to die. She didn't know exactly how he found out, but she had a pretty good idea. It had been stupid on her part. Draco had wanted to met her in Diagon Alley for lunch, and like an idiot she'd accepted. It appeared normal enough. Even though they were obviously on opposite sides, they still both worked in the farce known as the Ministry of Magic, so it could have been a lunch between two colleagues. And he'd given her a rose. Right when she took it, she saw Ron walk out of Flourish and Blotts. Although she tried to hide the rose, she was pretty sure he'd seen it. That night, he asked her. And she'd told him.

Hermione had never loved Ron in the way she loved Draco. Ron was like the lovable puppy she had when she was a child, there was never the passion that there was with Draco. It had been a safe move, a marriage of convenience. But he was still her best friend. And her infidelity tore him apart.

So she left. She never even told Draco goodbye. She never wanted to se him again. And she never looked back, until that fateful day when Harry's new owl Scheherezade found her in France with the news that Ron had finally died at the hands of the Death Eaters. And then she knew she had to come back. She had to make her piece with Ron in death if she couldn't in life.

She hadn't expected to see Draco Malfoy again. She hadn't wanted too. He represented everything she'd ever done wrong with her life. And when she did see him, she wanted more than anything to tell him how much she regretted denying their relationship. Everything had gone wrong because of it. But she just couldn't.

There was another loud crack and Harry appeared before her. The war had aged him. His hair was long and as unkempt as always. He had deep lines in his face from years of worry and stress. In her palm, the rose suddenly wilted.

"Hermione…" He said uncertainly.

And Hermione cried.


End file.
